


Symbols

by foundCarcosa



Category: Norse Mythology
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-03
Updated: 2012-07-03
Packaged: 2017-11-09 03:04:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/450545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundCarcosa/pseuds/foundCarcosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A gift from the jotunn lad. Just a bit of fluff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Symbols

Alone, standing at the edge of the world, he would watch stars bloom into being and fold into unbeing, and his fingers would find the marks the jotunn lad left — in places where neck curved into shoulder, where collarbone gave way to pectoral swell, where thigh joined torso. They’d sting anew, darts of cold awakening his nerve endings, and the waiting would become less unbearable.

The true nature of time is irrelevant to the Watchman — he measures time in the sluggish beating of his heart and how it becomes less sluggish when Vetr arrives. He measures time in how the hollows in his chest widen and spread, and how much of the jotunn’s presence it takes to fill them in again.

Once, he paid attention to naught but that which he must. He finds it impossible to fathom, now, that he could have been so bleak-hearted.

Vetr comes, again, and Heimdall is reminded that the Bifrost shimmers with colour and Yggdrasil blooms and the cosmos are grand and full of life.

“Hey, did you know there’s a lunar eclipse on Midgard?” The jotunn is not one for formal greetings, launching into his latest bit of news as soon as he was within Himinbjörg’s shielding borders.  
Heimdall’s home did not require walls; in his haven, the place where he was himself, he could not see out, and no one could see in.

“What is a lunar eclipse?”  
Vetr laughs, leaping onto the bed with a fluid motion that did not befit his gangly limbs, and folding his legs under him. The bed is much too big for him, and he seems markedly frail to Heimdall.

“It’s when the moon covers the sun. I think! Don’t quote me. But it’s a big deal over there, you know.”

“You spend much time on Midgard.” Heimdall, his back to Vetr, busies himself with his flagon, tipping it towards his mouth and ignoring the words he did not speak.

“I know, _I know,_ I haven’t been good about my visits, I keep thinking I’ll be caught and… well.” He sighs, and there is a shifting of silken sheets as he slides off the bed and approaches. “Look, they think I’m still there. On Midgard, I mean. I’ll stay with you longer this time, how’s that?”

Heimdall is slow to answer, and before he can, Vetr is speaking again. “Anyway, don’t be too mad. I brought you something!”

From under a garment much too large for him — most garments were — he produces… a crystal, it seems. He holds the jagged formation upward for Heimdall’s inspection, and through it his red eyes gleam above a broad grin.

Focusing on the object itself, Heimdall notes that it captures the light and throws it back in the form of colour — a rainbow, shimmering within it and jetting outward, much like Bifrost.

“They call it a _prism._ But, it looks like ice, you know? Ice, with a rainbow in it. I… though that was neat, for some reason… can’t remember now…” Vetr's mouth twists into a frown of concentration whilst Heimdall takes the prism, turns it this way and that, watching the light refract.

The symbolism was sketchy at best, and likely Vetr had just been whistling in the dark when he thought of it. But Heimdall understands.  
The jotunn yelps in surprise when he is enfolded in Heimdall’s embrace, the golden one’s face half-lost in his shock of brown-black hair and his eyes sliding closed.

Alone again, much later, standing at the edge of the world, the Guardian watches Sól’s light being transformed by the crystalline object in his hands, and the waiting is, for once, less unbearable.


End file.
